A splendid weekend

Dan and a small group of his friends from high school had their mini 40th year anniversary here last weekend. They numbered 3, a very select group. I was privileged to tag along, nice because I have long history with two of the three, obviously Dan, and his friend Pat was also a friend of mine in the dorm at Washington State in 1970. Their third, Nancy is yet another affable person and easy to blend with as was her jusband Rhett who joined us for Friday dinner. The hard part for me was keeping my lips zipped while they were planning the weekend, but I am glad I did, they came up with an agenda that was different than I would have that was great.

Saturday found us doing Portland's T4. It starts at the zoo, hiking to Portland's highest point, Council Crest, and on to OHSU, a 4 mile hike. From there we rode the tram to the Willamette River waterfront, and caught the streetcar to downtown Portland. We had lunch during the day's only downpour, and bathed in sunshine headed to MAX for the trainride back to the zoo.

After dinner Saturday the "classmates" headed out to a dancing studio for an evening of ballroom dancing which ended up being salsa dancing. Their evening ended earlier than planned and theywere back here for the end of the trick or treating hours.

Sunday we headed to Cannon Beach. Who would have thought that November 1 on the Oregon Coast would be a day when we would shed our fleece and walk on the beach basking in the glow of the sunshine. Too sweet!

Ahhh

A couple of months ago (actually at Linda's memorial) some friends from our college days talked to us about joining them for a Hawaii vacation in November. It was tempting, but afterall, the economy stinks and in all likelihood the sky is falling...how could we possibly do something so radical. Dan finally convinced me that spending money on a vacation was not in fact evil, and was something reasonable for us to do. As it turned out our friends were going to Kauai and the return flight on my airline of choice is a red-eye. That didn't sound like a proper ending for a vacation so we decided to go to Maui and hook up with our friends later on the mainland. Long story short, our Maui return ended up as a more or less red-eye, it is 3:30 a.m. and we just got home. Oh well

We had a great trip in all, some parts better than others, but something I would repeat.

The highlights:

- first class upgrades are really nice, these were probably our last since I don't travel much these days.

- The Sacred Pools near Hana

- Snorkeling at Molokini, awesome!

- the views from Haleakala

- Lunch at Mama's Fish House

The unbelievables

- People actually riding bikes UP Haleakala

- The young woman sunning near us who repeatedly arranged, admired and photographed her cleavage, multiple wardrobe changes involved.

Mahalo, life is good.

Ah, The Holidays

Much to my surprise Thanksgiving has come and gone. Dan's parents, sisters and their families come to our house and those who have been here before know the drill so it is pretty easy. Lee and Clare usually arrive Tuesday afternoon and have their annual visit with Sandy who keeps our lives in order. This year Sandy was gone by the time they got here, so they missed that catch up. The others start arriving Thursday morning. Dan and I start the turkey, cranberries, etc., but once the others arrive they get to work. This year Aaron peeled potatoes, and Matt riced and mixed them. As usual Clare did the salad, and suddenly it was dinner time.

Ollie is usually the life of the party, hasn't met many audiences he isn't prepared to wow with his acrobatics. Apparently Thanksgiving is different, he spent most of it hiding in the depths of our closet. Our guests all left by about 8 on Saturday. It took him until 8:30 to leave our bedroom, cautiously surveying the house to confirm his assumption that all of those extra people were gone. It took him another 30 minutes to get his swagger back, and 15 minutes more to assume command of the household. All is well.